I have not been able to figure out what is going on with me lately. I cannot write, or concentrate, or work. I start wonderful pieces of writing and then lose interest and decide to take a nap.

I got off track after successfully getting on track a few weeks ago when I deviated from being an infrastructure inducing dynamo to do taxes. Then I worked on some non-writing projects and got sidetracked. In the middle of March I began to have a gut ache, pain, and felt like my digestive system had stopped dead in its tracks. After three days of fairly intense pain I went to the doctor at Hubby’s insistence and then had to go for an MRI with contrast as well as have a full blood workup.

I was scared shitless for a bit as one brother died at age 55, younger than I am. A second brother died at age 59. I try to be in touch with my body and usually on top of what is going on with it. This blind-sided me.

I have been told that I have diverticulitis even though I had a colonoscopy a few years ago, after turning 50 just like the health guidelines suggest to do, and everything looked good. No need of a followup for 10 years. Damn. So I was given the classic treatment of Cipro and an another antibiotic that kills anaerobic bacteria.

The other thing they found was that my fatty liver that they told me had gotten better has not. My liver is enlarged. And over the course of being on the antibiotics a dull occasional pain in my mid-right back has gotten progressively worse.

So I’m seeing the doctor again.

I do not likemedical appointments. My mother exhibited behavior that had all the hallmarks of Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy. Until I was 14 I played along with her and pretended to be ill. Actually being ill makes me depressed. I always think, deep down inside, that I am faking or exaggerating when I am ill, because of this early history.

Right now, I feel terrible, I am depressed, and am spending a lot of time blaming myself for becoming ill. But I am forcing myself to write again, every day, this month to get back in the saddleso to speak.

I am doing the A to Z Challenge for April and NaBloPoMo. I will conquer this abject attitude/health.

I am accustomed to being behind in task and topic. I have elevated “getting behind” into an art form. It encompasses several components:

That uncomfortable feeling of swirling uncertainty, doubt, and fear in my chest that translates into a tight throat and churning stomach is the precursor.

Procrastination and avoidance followed by last-minute frenzy sees the mission accomplished. I still get things done.

Then the beating up myself starts with negative self-talk. The result of the procrastinated task could have been accomplished in a better fashion if only I would not have been like I am and done a half-assed job.

This is not a funny topic. But, learning to laugh has saved me from completing this swirly carnival ride into depression many times in the last ten years.

I still ride it occasionally. I sometimes wake up realizing I have been transported to the ride’s destination overnight: the desolate void of an abandoned midway with garish booth lights flashing through a muted drizzle and reflecting off the light-absorbing slick of pavement. Carnival of depression, I know you well.

I have learned over the years, through talking, writing, and reading to get out of bed and not to pull the covers over my head. I stumble off to get a cup of coffee and take my Zoloft.

Thank heavens for addiction. Without the threat of caffeine withdrawal, I might never get out of bed. Once out of bed, I just have to remember to take the damn pill from the prescription I will have to take every morning for the rest of my life.

Caffeinated and medicated, I can mentally zap the Killer Clowns from the Outer Midway (intentional homage to Killer Klowns from Outer Space) off the planet for the rest of my day as the ludicrous abomination they are.

Sometimes it helps to actually form the mental image of Marvin the Martin zapping my nemesis. Daffy Duck without a beak always makes me laugh. Two things that are always good are laughter and giving myself a break. Then, I look around my disheveled house and quote the Talking Heads, “This is not my beautiful house…” and I move on to ignore the piles of laundry, dirty dishes, stacks of mail, and pet play detritus, and begin to write.

Writing takes me to a rational place where words tumble on to the page like a conversation with an old friend. Writing comforts me, soothes me, makes me feel whole. I excel at writing when I cannot find a path to excellence in housekeeping, or holding down a full-time, or stressful job, or even staying current with the social media that substitutes for writing on days when the muse takes a vacation. Then when I have said something worthwhile on the digital page, I can move on to other tasks. This is okay.

The tasks might include scrubbing some pots and pans, or it might include attending a Senate Armed Services Committee meeting and calling Rumsfeld a liar, or cradling granddaughters in my arms. I have done such things. I will do such things. It all depends on how I feel.

Women bloggers chatting in NYC in 2012

I have learned how to navigate with my depression as compass. It is not bad. I just try to avoid those vortexes where the needle spins out of control. Writing every day grounds me, allows me to succeed, and in these days of blog networks allows me to connect with other people. I’m not alone anymore. Through my bloggy connections I have connected with my peers, a fabulous generation, as we walk down this boulevard of midlife and beyond, with a clarity of purpose: to change everything.

Breathe. It is okay. I am not alone.

I walk with sister writers who really don’t care if yesterday’s hashtag was #dayoflight and I am only now writing about it. There are things they have not yet gotten to, too. “Getting behind” doesn’t bother me, I no longer worry about “getting ahead,” well, not much anyway. Women, and writers who write about being women, realize that things come around again. Blood, life, death, community, they are all experienced as part of a cycle. Cycles are real. Monthly cycles are real. Life cycles are real. Generational cycles are real.

Like this:

I started writing this post a few days ago on Ash Wednesday. We are now into the season of Lent. I don't know exactly what that means for Catholics. I'm not Catholic. I'm not exactly a NONE either. What's a NONE? It is a term derived from when a person checks “None of the Above” when asked to check a box on a form to denote your religion. I just discovered the term on Ash Wednesday when I zipped off to check out the blog of a solo RVer. I want to be her when I grow up, except I want the RV to be a solar powered electric powered RV.

I've written previously in other places, if you follow my writing, about being unwittingly indoctrinated as a child into a sort of secular Anabaptist mindset. I've also mentioned that I have Amish mitochondrial DNA. Because of these givens in my life I never had much of an acquaintance with Lent. The notion seemed sort of contrarian to me. It is Spring where I live, even where Spring will not sproing for several weeks, the midpoint of Winter's transition into Spring has passed. Agrarian practices that shaped our still observed calendar require the preparation of the farmstead and homestead for birthing and planting. Now is a traditional time for strategizing about how to sustain life by carefully planned growth. Perhaps that is what Lent is all about way down deep. I don't know. What I do know is that I have thought a great deal about consciously structuring my life, Catholicism, the farse that is quickly becoming the way of at least one half of the political machine in Washington, D.C., and how women can be the savior of all of the world that is touched by any one of these topics.

The problem I am facing is that I pay attention… to too many things, and allow far too many of these things to which I pay attention to touch my psyche. I suspect that many women do this, and some men too. The fact is, in my humble opinion, some of the human population has to be wired to anticipate, integrate, and yes, sometimes even worry. We wouldn't have made it this far unless some of us obcess about what might be.

Because I have experienced episodes of depression throughout my lifetime, my analytic nature can mistake the valid anticipation I experience when paying attention to and assessing patterns and trends in society. I can ramp up to the over-thinking called worry and on rare occasions progress to despair totally apart from anything related to a imbalance I have which my physician and I successfully treat with an SSRI medication.

Being aware of how fucked up the world is can lead to a depressed state. This rational reaction to distinct trajectories of cultural processes in the world is probably distinct from the ongoing depression I have experienced since I was a preteen.

The last couple weeks have found me poundering whether the funk I've been in is depression or disillusionment. After very serious reflection, I have determined that I am disillusioned.

Government is totally disfunctional: obstruction, vengeance, and greedy corruption when we need to be addressing downright un-American ever-widening hierarchical class structure. Democracy is in danger if we don't outmaneuver the evil, mega-rich, corporatist ass-hats who are attempting to overthrow our Representative Democracy, which, though flawed, is the best form of mega-government around because it allows us to evolve.

And I've also been assessing what has happened since I first marched with CODEPINK Women for Peace in late Winter of 2003 as the Bush administration's relentless, irrational drumbeat toward war with Iraq got closer and closer to their goal. I'm going to do a Linky Tool's Blog Hop for March 8th, 2013, International Women's Day and the anniversary of the day when CODEPINK first marched. I marched with them that day.

The changes these Koch-Adelson-Murdoch loving greedy bastards have supported are Un-American and I will do everything in my power to avoid supporting them. I tend to support the viewpoint that says that energy used to work against something actually supports that something because energy is energy period. The only time I have deviated from this is when I participated in protests as a CODEPINK member and that was because information was being suppressed and taking it to the street was necessary to get the information out about the lies told to get us into the Iraq War. Information is neither pro or con, it just is. I'm very glad Hubris was aired last evening. It is very important we do not forget what happened in this fabricated and unfinanced war. The Bush Tax cuts also deserve this type of review. Deregulation,the war and the tax cuts created the financial mess we are in now, and that the same party that promoted all these debacles now wants the poor, working poor and the middle class to pay for their follies. I am viscerably disturbed by this.

One other thing that makes me physically queasy is that people are all abuzz about the abdication of the head an archaic 4th Century construction that solidified political and military control by incorporating religious control into oppressive rule and building empire. The man abdicating his supreme rule was a member of Hitler youth and as a Cardinal he was the ultimate authority over pedaphile priests who were enabled to rape children time and again by church orchestrated moves from place to place. With the war on women raging, and the crimes perpetrated by the Church in covering up child rape by priests, I wonder how any woman can call herself Catholic.

So forgive my lack of cheery or technical posts in the past few days. I've been thinking about stuff, more stuff, and even more stuff. It makes me sad… which is very distinct from depression.

The last day of the year. How is this possible? I remember thinking way back when I was in my twenties how remarkably far away the Millennium was and how horrifically old I would be when it happened. Good Lord I would be in my 40s! Now heading into the 14th year past the whoop-de-do fin de siècle I think we may now finally, crossing my fingers here, be past the last of the millennialist doomsday cultish pop cultural preoccupation with death and destruction.

This year was just plain old hard for me. I should have expanded my horizons, but I am more cut off than socially than I was last year at this time and feeling a bit depressed about not having that damn book done.

I walked through so many unpleasant scenes from my life, revisiting them time and again, so as to figure out how to address them in telling my story without leaving out crucial but personally disgusting memories, and in how to handle saying things generally enough to not be sued, but specifically enough to convey the inappropriateness of at least one aspect of nearly every relationship in my life.

I'm where I can write about everything, and I only hope the Goddess sticks with me long enough to finish what I think will be a truly useful narrative for medical abuse and factitious disorder survivors, and people who love them or seek to help them heal, about growing up in the nexus of The Family Munchausen. I want so terribly at times to simply walk away and just blog about boomers, cohorts and generations. I know as much as I need to know to continue healing as I move through life and new experiences. I don't have to do this writing that I have spent most of this year on, one way or another, for me. I am doing it because I feel I have the ability to share an insiders perspective on a little known topic and that doing so may help a significant number of people.

I will be glad to be able to be happy again. I have only ,in the last few weeks, figured out that I had to get in touch not only with my experiences and anger toward certain creepy people who took advantage of the already damaged young person I was, but a generalized anger toward the world that allowed this to happen horrible things to happen to me and did not give me tools or perspective to heal and move on successfully.

So figuring it all out was this year's work, addressing the unaddressed aspects of my life while facing some significant milestones like moving my daughter across country, facing more changes that totally blind-sided me, in more than a couple close relationships. I think it is good to do wrap ups at years ending. Conscious, reasoned responses can be fashioned and I am living proof of that.

In spite of a generalized funk that seemed to grow throughout the year, I did not suffer an apocalypse. Newtown, CT did, Aurora, CO did, untold families and individuals did. And that is why we have to hold hope and kindness in our hearts… we have to preserve it so that the individuals who have faced world-ending horror have something to which they can reconnect which allows them to believe in goodness and find reason to go on.

Therefore I am listing some of the very good things about 2012.

GBE2 group on Facebook, a group of writers through which I've found many wonderful writers.

GenFab on which started out on Facebook is moving to a web presence as another group of writers who are all women of a certain age.

BlogHer Conference attendees who are also, you may be sensing a theme here, women of a certain age who I met or re-met in NYC in August such as Mimi, Marci, Sharon, Judy, Suzi, Jan… and scads more.

Corporate entities, incorporated or not, such as BoomBox Network, SecondLives.com, GrownandFlown who helped convince me that there is a market for my senior moments.

The friends I reconnected with this year. Yes, Deb, this means you. We are awesome and I am so glad we can remind each other of this again!

The very best thing is knowing that even though my daughter lives far too far away, she calls me on her lunch hours, and we can yakkity yak for an hour with no problems. We are still close, and maybe even closer than we have been since when she was little. Maybe the terrible twos are over… I hear they can last for up to 22 years. So we are ahead of the game.

Senator Nina “Get Outta My Panties,” Turner, from Cleveland, who has served in the Ohio Senate since 2008 was one of the very good things about this past year too! I love it when women speak truth to power.

November has not been a good month for me emotionally. My Done Nesting site has stalled, like everything in my life seems to do sooner or later, due to a lack of funds. October is usually the difficult month for me, but this year it expanded into November. I will not let this be a trend.

My accomplishments for the month of November 2012 include all of the following, even though I have not been able to write posts or chat on Facebook, even though I have wanted to write posts and chat:

I traveled somewhere I had not yet gone. I visited Xcatel, Quintana Roo, Mexico. And I visited Chichen Itza.

I have accomplished some good and powerful things this month. I have also come to some powerful and not so pleasant realizations, most of which I will not talk about here. If you want to know the inner me and the complex story that created me, you will just have to buy my book. No, it isn’t out or even finished. But I’m seriously working on it again. I’m preparing a proposal for Green Leaf Book Group, a publishing “house” for the 21st Century that fits my needs, and I theirs, or that is the fact of which I must convince them.

I have also started up a boomer blog again, or at least I have started working on the infrastructure. It is BoomHer.net.

Months have meaning for me. November has been a month about which I have mixed feelings for a decade or so. I wrote a poem once about my death called “November Comes for Me.” No I don’t believe I am destined to die some day in a November. It is about my perception of death and how that perception controls me when I am in a depressive episode. But I picked it as a metaphor, so at some level it discloses how I feel about the month of November. In my overly analytic mind November is preparation for a post-Holiday let down. That is a joke. Sort of. Not a very good one I am afraid. But that is sort of what framing something during a depressive episode is like. I am very glad that I found a medication that allows me to function and not tunnel all the way into black despair. Living with depression isn’t ever easy. Now if I could just get my husband to stop framing all of my actions as those of a depressive. Ah, there is always more to be done. That is life. And that is good. I got stuff done, it just wasn’t writing or what others wanted me to do.

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About Me

I have written and published many blogs over the last 15 years on the topics of Later Born Baby Boomers, Peace & Justice Activism, Virtual Worlds, Gene Stratton-Porter, and Medical Child Abuse. I love research, information and the quest for knowledge. I'm an anthropologist by training, and a freelance content creator by vocation. I love things that make sense, could be, and might be so I enjoy good speculative fiction along the lines of Cory Doctorow and TV shows like Dr. Who and Orphan Black.